How to deal with underbrace inside parentheses?

Question

I have the following equation:

J_\pi(x_0)=\left(\underbrace{g_N(x_N)}_{\mathclap{\substack{\text{Terminal}
           \\\text{cost}}}}+\underbrace{\sum_{k=0}^{N-1}g_k(x_k,u_k,w_k)}_
           {\mathclap{\substack{\text{Accumulated}\\\text{cost}}}}\right)

Which outputs:

I want to get rid of the "extra height" on the parentheses (circled above in red) that's created due to the underbrace. How do I do this? Thank you!

Solution: I used biggl and biggr as per the suggestions, it works:

Thank you!

This is one of the typical situations where the automatic stretching of \left and \right overreacts. IMHO just set the delimiter size manually, like \biggl( and \biggr). — campa, Oct 23 '15 at 12:06
Related: http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/145865/underbrace-in-denominator-with-howto and http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/182749/underbrace-matrix-inside-brackets — Steven B. Segletes, Oct 23 '15 at 12:14
Using the \bigg approach, if you want your underbraces to vertically align, try: \documentclass{article} \usepackage{mathtools,stackengine} \begin{document} \[ J_\pi(x_0)=\biggl(\underbrace{\addstackgap[10.6pt]{$g_N(x_N)$}}_{\mathclap{\substack{\text{Terminal} \\\text{cost}}}}+\underbrace{\sum_{k=0}^{N-1}g_k(x_k,u_k,w_k)}_ {\mathclap{\substack{\text{Accumulated}\\\text{cost}}}}\biggr) \] \end{document} — Steven B. Segletes, Oct 23 '15 at 12:22

score 6 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 23 '15 at 12:07

Even without underbraces you shouldn't use here \left ... right, as they give too high parentheses. There is family \bigl, \Bigl, \biggl, \Biggl and closing \bigr and so on. You can choose suitable height, using them, e.g.

\[
J_\pi(x_0)=\Biggl(\underbrace{g_N(x_N)}_{\mathclap{\substack{\text{Terminal}
           \\\text{cost}}}}+\underbrace{\sum_{k=0}^{N-1}g_k(x_k,u_k,w_k)}_
           {\mathclap{\substack{\text{Accumulated}\\\text{cost}}}}\Biggr)
\]

How to deal with underbrace inside parentheses?

1 Answers1